When Papa wrenched them away from France and settled Marguerite and her in this rainy cold spot, she had been only ten. Poor little Marguerite was merely a year, and far too young to know what she had lost.
The racetrack was extremely noisy. One had to assume that such things existed in Paris as well, but as far as she remembered, her maman had never mentioned such a thing. She could ask her father, but he was at their estate in Southwick, occupied with the dogs. Papa seemed to spend most of his day letting dogs in and out of the house. It was no way for a French aristocrat to behave, particularly one with a houseful of servants.
Sylvie sighed. The only enjoyable thing about the racecourse was that English gentlewomen were taking the opportunity to dress themselves with élégance. In the box next to hers, Lady Feddrington was wearing a bonnet that looked like nothing so much as an entire meringue, tied up with a ribbon. It wasn’t entirely successful, but it had a notable streak of originality about it. And she was waving a fan with a sweet little amber fringe; Sylvie decided that she would quite like to know where it came from. She glanced to her right. Mayne was scowling down at a book they’d given him on entering.
“When does your animal run?” she asked, to be gracious. She had to ask it twice, but he was quite apologetic once she got his attention. That was one thing she liked about her future husband. He was invariably polite.
“I am running two horses,” he said, “an elegant little filly named Sharon and the lazy sorrel gelding who just trotted in last.”
“Oh dear,” Sylvie said, “you should have told me that your horse was running by us, Mayne. I would have paid attention.”
“I told you he ran in the fourth race.”
Apparently he thought that she was counting these tiresome rounds? Sylvie noticed that Lady Feddrington was wearing diamonds as large as daisies in her ears. Rather gauche, or could one put it down to flare? It was so hard, sometimes, to decide between the two. Certainly Lady Feddrington had an adorable visage, with her pouting lips and wide set-apart eyes.
“I might go to the stables and see how my jockey is doing,” Mayne said. “It can be quite dispiriting to lose so badly, and I want him to keep his heart up for Sharon’s race. Would you like to accompany me?”
“To the barn?”
“If you would be interested.”
There was no question of that. Mayne had a great deal to learn about ladies, obviously. “I shall pay a small visit to Lady Feddrington,” Sylvie said, giving him a gently corrective smile. In time, he would learn the appropriate places to invite his wife. An enclosure designed for animals was not one of them.
She stood up and waited while he collected her pelisse, her reticule, and her fan. She carried her parasol herself, as she was determined that not even one ray of sunlight would strike her face.
“Lady Feddrington,” she said, as Mayne opened the small door between their boxes, “I trust I do not intrude. We met two nights ago at the Mountjoy fete.”
“Miss Broderie,” Lady Feddrington said with just the right amount of appreciation to soothe Sylvie’s slightly disturbed spirits, “I am enchanted to see you. Please do come and relieve the tedium of this afternoon.”
That was precisely the right thing to have said in front of Mayne; it meant that she did not have to point out the same herself. So Mayne took himself off, and Sylvie plumped down next to Lady Feddrington. Within a few minutes they were bosom friends, speaking on the intimate level that Sylvie most enjoyed and which she constantly strove to achieve. In fact, Lady Feddrington—or Lucy, as it turned out—was such good company that Sylvie quite forgot that she was in such an objectionable place as the racetrack.
“I feel just the same,” Lucy confided sometime later. “Of course, I do my best to support Feddrington in moments like these. He has a large stable and works himself into a disagreeable state of anxiety over large races. In fact, I have to insist that he leave me in the box by myself, because I find that I do not enjoy close proximity with a man in a lather of anxiety, if you’ll excuse my frankness. But you will never suffer as I do, dearest Sylvie. One cannot imagine Mayne in a lather over anything!”
Sylvie agreed. One of her primary reasons for choosing Mayne had been his impeccable appearance at every moment. He was almost French that way. Well, considering that his mother was French, his elegance must have been inherited from his mother. Although given that his mother had retired to a nunnery, Sylvie found her elegance slightly hard to imagine.
The important thing was that Mayne’s attendance at her side had not been all it could be. “He was distraught,” she told Lucy. “I prefer an escort who is more attentive. Mayne actually showed a slight surliness when I did not notice that his horse had lost a race.”
“They’re always like that,” Lucy said comfortingly. “I have been married for three years now, and I am, perforce, an expert on the subject. And darling, you will be the same, for I believe that Mayne’s stables are even larger than Feddrington’s. They grow increasingly agitated in the weeks before a large race, such as the Ascot. Feddrington even wakes up in the middle of the night at times, if you can countenance it.”
“You don’t!” Sylvie said with horror, before she caught the words back.
Lucy giggled. “Do you mean share a bedchamber?” And, at Sylvie’s little nod, “Of course not!”
“You must forgive me,” Sylvie said, flustered. “It’s just that I have many things still to learn about English nobility.”
“I feel as if I’ve known you forever,” Lucy said, bending her head closer, “so I shall tell you something truly indiscreet, hmm?”
Sylvie loved indiscretions.
“When Feddrington is nervous and can’t sleep in the night, he visits my chambers,” Lucy confided.
“He has the temerity to wake you up?” Sylvie said, blinking at her. Her father would never, under any circumstances, have woken her maman. Maman’s chambers were sacred to her sleep, and even her maid knew better than to enter the room until eleven of the clock, and then only if she carried une tasse de chocolat.
“I have yet to break him of the habit,” Lucy said, sighing. “I have impressed upon him that my sleep is more important than his horses, but I don’t seem to be able to convince him. Men are invariably selfish in these matters, you know. I have found it best for the happiness of the household if I simply acquiesce. Of course, I have made it clear that such things will be tolerated only if the race is truly one of the largest, such as the Ascot.”
Sylvie was appalled. She tended to avoid thinking about the issue of marital intimacies; her maman had unfortunately passed away before clarifying these things. But Sylvie knew instinctively that this was not an aspect of marriage that would please her. Under no circumstances would she engage in something so distasteful in the middle of the night. Perhaps…one evening a month. She had decided that would surely be enough to satisfy Mayne. After all, she had chosen a man with a reputation for finding his own pleasures; while she was rather looking forward to the idea of having enfants, she did not consider marriage to be a contract ensuring that she provide all the entertainment.
“Mayne is so in love with you,” Lucy said, giggling again. “He must be positively ardent.”
“He behaves precisely as he ought.” Now she thought about it, Mayne would never be so impolite as to try to wake her at night. Never. Her poor friend Lucy’s husband was obviously incommodious and, though it pained her to think it, ill-bred.
“Oh!” Lucy cried. “Here is my dear friend Lady Gemima. I asked her to join me this afternoon.”
Coming toward them was a woman wearing an exquisite promenade gown of periwinkle blue. “She has the most lovely costumes,” Lucy sighed. “She’s not married, you know, but she’s enormously rich so she just does precisely as she pleases.” She lowered her voice. Lady Gemima was greeting Mrs. Homily, a red-faced matron who had been trotting up and down in front of the boxes like a terrier smelling a rat. “She was engaged four years ago, but then the gentleman d
ied. I do believe he was a marquis. She put on mourning for a year, and then declared that she would never marry. She is the only daughter of a younger brother of the Duke of Smittleton. He was a colonel in the army, stationed in Canada, and as I understand it, he made a positive fortune in shipping. So of course then he was given his own title. One would think that she would be bad ton, unmarried as she is, and raised in Canada. But she’s not.”
Sylvie could see that for herself. Lady Gemima wasn’t precisely beautiful. Her face was a trifle long, and her mouth too coolly intelligent. But her hair was an extraordinary striped, tortoiseshell color, and as she came into the box and curtsied to Sylvie and Lucy, Sylvie saw that her eyes were green and fringed with thick lashes of the same color as her hair. Her clothes were obviously French. Sylvie rose with the sense of having at last met someone who was, as her papa would say of boxers, at her weight.
A few moments later she confirmed that opinion. Lady Gemima was uproariously funny. She no sooner sat down than she had them in stitches, telling them exaggerated tales of the kind of exploits that an unmarried woman obviously shouldn’t know about.
“Am I horrifying you?” she asked Sylvie at one point. “I believe you’re engaged to the Earl of Mayne, so I thought you were probably unshockable. If not, you soon will be.”
“I am,” Sylvie said, although it was quite untrue. She was rewarded with one of Lady Gemima’s warm smiles.
“I didn’t think you were one of those tiresome debutante types,” she said. “Lord, but I’m tired of young women. Men are so much more interesting.”
“I don’t agree,” Lucy said.
“Neither do I,” Sylvie said. “I find men of all things tiring and inevitably troublesome. There is nothing more pleasant than spending the afternoon in this way.”
“Well, of course, amongst ourselves,” Gemima said. “But I am bored by endless conversations about reticules. You can’t even discuss a petticoat without it being a bit too risqué for someone.”
“I heard the funniest thing about petticoats the other day,” Lucy said, giggling again. “Lady Woodliffe told me that she ordered all her petticoats in pale gray silk so that they would suit whatever garment she wore. She intends to stay in half-mourning for her darling Percy the rest of her life.”
“Ridiculous,” Gemima said. “Considering that the man died in the arms of a strumpet, by all accounts. You’d think she’d be wearing pink ruffles.” Her lifted eyebrow was so funny that Sylvie kept laughing. “But you do know, don’t you, that the oh-so-righteous Lady Woodliffe was seen coming out of Grillon’s Hotel last spring?”
“No!” Lucy gasped.
“Indeed. I heard it from Judith Falkender, who’s a very reliable source. Of course, she may have been trying to catch her husband in the act.”
Sylvie wrinkled her nose. “Why would she bother? And what is this place, Grillon’s?”
“Oh, it’s the only hotel in London worth visiting,” Gemima told her. “All the ambassadors stay there. I stayed there for a fortnight a year ago, just to see if I would like it, but even though I took a whole floor, there really wasn’t enough room for all the people it takes to put myself together. You’d like it, Lucy. Are you still interested in all things Egyptian?”
“No,” Lucy said. “I stripped the ballroom of all those odd statues and things. Feddrington is quite displeased because they cost so much, but I gave them all to the British Museum and now he’s happy because they’re going to name a room after him.”
“The Room of Feddrington Monstrosities,” Gemima said, laughing. “I thought it was a bit much when you had those death gods overlooking the ballroom.”
“They added atmosphere,” Lucy said, shrugging off her criticism. “And look how well it turned out. The director of the museum almost fainted when I showed him Humpty and Dumpty. That’s what I called them,” she told Sylvie. “They were great monstrous things, around ten feet tall.”
“I’d love to go to Egypt,” Gemima said lazily. “I’m thinking of starting to travel, you know.”
“Alone?” Sylvie asked.
“Well, since I dislike the idea of taking a husband merely as an umbrella stand,” Gemima said, “I expect I shall travel alone. Although to be quite honest, that would be merely a figure of speech.”
Lucy laughed. “You don’t know Gemima yet, Sylvie. She has the largest household of anyone I know. How many personal maids do you have at the moment, Gemima?”
“Three,” Gemima said, “but only because I’m so very difficult. If one poor woman had to deal with me, I’d have to give her a hardship allowance.”
They all laughed, and for a moment the pale English sunshine turned the whole racetrack into a delightful place, full of women with brains, temperament, and beauty. “I am enjoying England!” Sylvie said, delighted.
Mayne was dodging around crowds of chattering men to return to Sylvie when he caught a glimpse of her laughing in Lady Feddrington’s box and sighed with relief. Thank God, that little French face of hers wasn’t looking at him with an expression of gentle disappointment. She was laughing harder than he’d ever seen her laugh, so hard that her parasol had actually slipped to the side. Then Lady Gemima turned her head so that Mayne caught her profile, and he saw the reason. Everyone he knew adored Gemina, except for a few carping Puritans. He could leave Sylvie with Lucy Feddrington for at least another half hour.
He turned around and headed back toward the long, low stables where Sharon was waiting for her race. There was something odd about Sharon this morning, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but that didn’t feel right. His jockey had sworn up and down that Sharon was absolutely herself.
“Mayhap a little spooked by the crowds,” Billy, his stablemaster, had said.
But Mayne wondered. He started plowing back through the crowds, head down, when he heard someone call his name. He looked up and there was his sister, Griselda, and next to her, Josie. She looked none the worse for all that champagne; it must be her youth. He had a distinctly heavy head himself.
“Darling,” Griselda said lavishly. She seemed to be in extraordinarily high spirits. “We want to see your horses, of course. We were on the way to the box, but now you can take us to the stables.”
Josie was smiling at him without a trace of shyness. Shouldn’t she be the least bit shy after last night? Well, why should she?
“I’m not sure you should come to the stables,” he told Griselda. “There’s so many ruffles on that costume that you might frighten the horses.”
“Nonsense,” Griselda said, waving her parasol about in a manner guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of a skittish thoroughbred.
Mayne tucked Griselda under one arm and Josie under the other. Josie wasn’t wearing the corset. In fact, she was showing a rather delectable figure, although her costume was rather oddly designed, with seams leading here and there that hardly accentuated her better features.
She looked up at him and said something he couldn’t hear, so he bent his head to her.
“We went to Griselda’s modiste this morning,” she whispered in his ear.
“I trust that you bankrupted Rafe,” he said back, loving the way her eyes were shining with excitement.
“I expect so,” she said impishly. “We didn’t inquire into such pedestrian details.”
He gave a mock groan. “It’s a good thing he’s on his wedding trip. You could—” But he bit it back. What on earth was he thinking, about to suggest that she charge her clothing to him?
She looked up at him, eyebrow raised, but now they were in front of Sharon’s box. The filly looked very small for such a large box.
Griselda was perfectly happy to peep over the top, and made clucking noises at Sharon, rather as if the filly were a kitten who might be coaxed into purring. Sharon ignored her. But Josie opened the box and went straight in.
“Don’t mess your slippers,” Griselda cried. “You know that animal likely—” She waved her parasol to illustrate her point.
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Billy gave a snort that expressed precisely what he thought about a lady who didn’t know that he cleaned the stall the moment one of his horses did something of that nature. Josie ignored her, going to Sharon’s side. She was saying something to Sharon in that dark little voice she had, and of course Sharon started arching her nose into Josie’s arm and making little snorting noises. Mayne leaned against the wall of the stall, raising his hand when Billy thought to take Sharon’s head.
Josie had stripped off her glove and was running her hand here and there on Sharon’s side. Billy moved forward again but Mayne shook his head.
She raised her eyes and looked at him, and Mayne knew. “Feel here,” she said quietly. His fingers came after hers, nibbling down Sharon’s shining side, just to the left of her backbone. She had been beautifully groomed; Billy must have worked on her for hours.
Josie’s fingers stilled and then moved to the side so he could feel. There were hard little nubbins under the skin. They rolled under his fingers. “What the devil is that?” he asked.
“It’s not serious,” Josie told him. “My father’s groom used to call it—” She hesitated.
Billy was there now, his dirty blunt-tipped fingers in the same place, his face dark. “The devil’s nuts, that is,” he said. “I missed it until this young lady found it. I should throw in my job, I should.”
Josie shook her head at him. “’Tis all I did, as a child. My father’s stables were very large, and he put me in charge of minding the horses’ health from the time I was twelve.”
“What do we do for these nuts?” Mayne asked. It didn’t seem to bother Sharon terribly when he touched them. A tiny ripple crossed her skin, as if a breeze passed over the shining surface of a lake.